Page:Morgan Philips Price - Siberia (1912).djvu/110

 76 ordinary diversity of the Russian character in the acquaintance that I made with a certain Mr S in Minusinsk. He was a cultivated and well-to-do gentleman who had settled there in order to study the archaeological remains in which the district abounds. Absolutely oblivious to the wild country and the primitive social conditions around him, he was so preoccupied with his work that he could hardly think of anything else. One morning I went to call on him I found him in a typical Russian house, busy writing a paper on a scientific subject. It was to me passing strange to meet here a man whom you would associate rather with the old court at Trinity or with Balliol than with a Siberian frontier town. On my arrival he welcomed me with the cordiality of a true Russian, and although he began his conversation with general subjects he could not long keep away from his scientific theories on the early inhabitants of those districts. For an hour he held forth to me with the almost fanatical enthusiasm which is so typical of a really educated Russian. I noticed, too, that he seemed to have a thorough knowledge of the detail of his subject, such as one more frequently finds among the Germans. Other Russian scientists whom I have met have generally been fervent and enthusiastic, but erratic and truly Slavonic in nature, and the enthusiastic and impressionable character of a cultivated Slav blended with the laborious thoroughness of a Teuton is a combination as rare as it is excellent. I learned much from this gentleman and spent many hours with him.

A provincial town like Minusinsk, the last urban centre before reaching the Mongolian frontier,